Away games always had her phone ringing, and Beth had decided long ago that she would always take whoever asked first, but she’d taken her friend Brittany who normally hung out with Lexy and Andi as much as she did Beth. Since she’d started a job this summer at the local grocery store, working as a cashier, Brittany was a lot busier than the other girls. Despite the calling of dibs by Andi earlier in the week, they both understood. For Brittany, sometimes being a little bit older could be a drag because she had to work so much, but at least she had her driver’s license and could drive them around the square—when she wasn’t working or grounded.
The next Tuesday the game was away again, and she’d taken Lexy after a rock paper scissors battle to the death between her bespectacled friend and Andi. There hadn’t been any tears at the resolution, but there had been some narrowed eyes and veiled threats. Beth assured Andi she had dibs on the next away game.
Beth was glad this Thursday, the game against Everton was at home.
The scorekeeper’s booth wasn’t any cooler than it had been the last time, so the girls decided to scoot the fan a little closer, even if it would make it harder to hear when names were announced over the PA system. None of them liked speaking into the microphone anyway, so it didn’t bother them that no one could hear what they were saying. Lexy wanted to test her theory out and say a curse word, the worst one she could think of, just to see if anyone noticed, but Andi talked her out of it. “Mr. Cooper would probably hear it, and you’d be banned from baseball for life. Just like Pete Rose.”
“Who the hell is Pete Rose?” Lexy asked.
“You probably shouldn’t ask that question while you’re running the scoreboard for a Babe Ruth baseball game,” Andi replied as Beth copied down the roster from the other team. She was used to hearing her friends bicker and often managed to tune it out.
“So…?”
Beth glanced up to see Andi staring at her, long eyelashes barely moving in front of her brown eyes. “So… what?”
“So Lexy said that Sammy was really chatting you up the other night, when you went to Liberty. That true?”
Looking past Andi at Lexy, she saw no remorse. Lexy was staring out at the opposing team, and Beth imagined she wasn’t even listening. She was likely trying to pick out who the cutest players were. “He talked to me a little bit,” Beth said with a shrug. “He always talks to me a little bit. But it wasn’t like he was flirting or anything.” She glanced at the home team dugout where the boys were just coming in from warming up. Sammy was talking to Michael, unaware that they were discussing him, or that she was staring his direction as if he were a glass of water--and she’d just crawled out of the desert. Beth pulled her eyes away.
“Well, Lex said she thinks he might like you.” Andi’s voice was sing-song, one of the many reasons Beth found it currently annoying.
“Whatever. I highly doubt it. When’s Brittany going to be here?”
“Great, change the subject.” Andi shook her head and turned away. “I don’t know. Grocery store closes at 8:00, so soon--maybe. Depends on whether her hunk of junk can make it here in one piece.”
“At least she has a car,” Lexy chimed in, finally pulling her eyes off the other team. Beth glanced over and did see a few good looking guys in red and blue uniforms, but Everton was so far away, it seemed ridiculous to even flirt with a guy she couldn’t see very often.
“True, but I wonder what we’re doing to our reputation by riding around the square with her,” Andi wondered aloud. “I mean… it dies all the time. It chugs fumes out in puffs of black smoke, and the seats are disintegrating.”
“You’re right. We’d be much cooler on our bicycles,” Lexy said, rolling her eyes behind her thick lenses.
“I’m not saying that. Beth, you have older friends. They take you out during the school year. Maybe you could get one of them to drive us around on Saturday night,” Andi suggested, giving Beth a nudge with her elbow she couldn’t ignore.
“My mom wants us all to go to the drive in on Saturday to see Cliffhanger,” Beth replied, not turning her head away from the ball diamond as the first batter for Everton approached home plate. She was busy watching Sammy play catch with another one of the infielders, and she wouldn’t let Andi’s negativity ruin that for her. “Brittany’s car is fine. Besides, you know my mom doesn’t like me to hang out on the square anyway.”
“Your mom is so afraid you’re going to get pregnant, I wonder if she even knows how it works,” Lexy said before giving them a finger, the signal she was turning on the microphone. She announced the first hitter and flipped the switch so that their conversation would be semi-private again.
“Seeing as though she has four kids, I’m guessing she does,” Andi answered for her. The idea of her parents…. Beth fought a queasy feeling in her stomach. Her friends loved to joke that her virtue was Evelyn’s reason for making her curfew so early, but Beth didn’t think it was funny.
“She is almost as overly protective as Ryan’s mom,” Lexy joked.
Beth didn’t think that was funny either. “I have a lot more freedom than Ryan does,” she said, her head swiveling around in defense of the boy who wasn’t there to defend himself for the exact reason Lexy seemed to think was funny.
“I was joking!” Lexy assured her. “Jeez. Chill, why don’t you?” Under her breath, she added, “I thought you liked Sammy, not Ryan.”
“Ryan and I are friends, that’s all.” Beth looked past Andi again, who was clearly amused by this discussion. “It’s just… you don’t understand. Especially now that he’s on this new medication, his mom has him practically held captive. She’s not even letting him go to church again until the doctor checks him next week.” She shook her head in disbelief, remembering how Ryan had told her that the medication sounded promising, like he thought he might even be able to leave the house some this summer, but his mother wanted to make sure everything was working correctly, and that meant extra caution between trips to visit the new doctor in Kansas City. It was all so absurd, Beth had joked he should write a book about it. Ryan hadn’t thought that was humorous at all, sort of like how Beth didn’t think Lexy’s goofing around was hilarious either.
She looked at Sammy, hoping it would calm her, but it didn’t help. If anything, it just made her stomach ache. He was ball ready, his knees bent, leaning slightly forward, his glove in front of him, and he looked as gorgeous as ever. She had no idea why one of the more popular girls hadn’t already scooped him up, but then she remembered how bizarre his dad was and wondered if that was part of the problem. Mr. Burk was leaning on a bat over by the dugout, not quite inside of it, and as Beth’s eyes considered if he was the problem, the bat slipped, and the older man almost tumbled to the ground. She held back a giggle as he grabbed onto the fence and righted himself. He looked around and breathed a sigh of relief, thinking no one had seen. His eyes didn’t quite travel high enough for him to realize he did have a witness. As ridiculous as he was, she doubted that was the problem. Since when did teenage girls worry about their prospective boyfriends’ dad being ridiculous?